I thought I'd have a go at investigating these Takeru machines, which I had only the vaguest notion about up until this thread. Thanks to all for stimulating interest. I'll post a bit ( gleaned from the Japanese Wikipedia entry mostly ) and add a bit more as time allows. Please correct errors. Links given to larger images where available.

Takeru Software Vending Machines

Starting in 1985, Brother Industries experimented with a software vending machine designed to be installed indoors in computer stores around Japan. The service started on April 21 1986, going through several hardware changes through its life, and in its heyday there were 300 machines installed around Japan.

One would select the software to be purchased on the screen using the touch panel and controls, pay, blank media would be dispensed which one would place in the appropriate drive for copying, and a receipt and the manual would be printed.

The business model proved not so great, especially given the high cost of the ISDN lines, so the machines came to be shared with the Joysound karaoke music distribution service to increase utilisation. Ultimately the Takeru business was moved into the Xing division which is still a major karaoke distribution business. The Takeru side ceased operation at the end of Feb 1997.

The game looks like an Indian Jones type, game. Many other series also hadthe same get up as well. This is imaginable as it was popular around the early1980's.

.......

Those vending machines, are auwsome. It make me think, why didn't we haveanything like that in our nation. Oh wait, I forget that Japan was destroyed,was going threw the reconstruction/occupication period, and was dependent on their economic bubble, that did not burst yet. Games in a vending machine was a better idea before then the internet period.

What files were in this download? There was also a follow-up post with download link. All links are dead. Was it just a scan of a single page? I'm currently editing my interview with Micky Albert (~10k words), and we chat about Seraph a bit.

Quote:

JS: Seraph: Sefil Afrei no Kioku was not widely released. Your company MNM made it, right?

MI: It wasn't unreleased. It did come out, for the PC-9801. Someone came to my company and asked us to let him make it. So we paid him money to do it, but he hardly made any progress, and I became quite angry with him. But later, this person approached Brother to publish the game. At this time I had fallen to my illness, and they apparently pitched the game to Brother as MNM Software's final release. But if the game had been released properly by MNM Software, my name would have been listed at the end as the producer, like always. But that didn't happen in this case. I didn't have a chance to supervise it, and I've hardly played any of it. When my company releases a game, I've usually played it more than anyone else. But that didn't happen for this game.

JS: So for Seraph, Brother swooped in and published it while you were ill?

MI: We were on good terms with Brother. But the person and his company who created this game ran away from us in a sense. They paid us back half of the money we had given them for development. Later, they contacted Brother for publishing. By that time, I was already hospitalized, so they probably thought I was going to die. But unfortunately for them, I didn't. <laughs> When this person first came to my company about making Seraph, I honestly had doubts about whether he could do it. But I wanted to give him a chance. I told him to do his best, even if that meant missing a deadline or two. But for whatever reason, he didn't live up to his end of the deal. If he had done his best and still failed, I could have accepted it. Problems just happen sometimes. I have had my own share of problems in my career. But not doing your best, that's a different matter. Maybe I was just too optimistic.

I'd like to illustrate the answer with whatever is available. That's all he said on Seraph.

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